Travels in the Riel World

Egypt has a history that stretches back thousands of years. It’s a boon for the tourist industry, which draws millions of annual visitors to the Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings and other such sites, but the country’s long past also has an interesting cultural influence as it seems to induce a sense of fatalism in the people. That’s the topic of a recent essay on Egypt by Michael Slackman in the International Herald Tribune.

Cairo is a city of about 18 million people that is layered with history stretching back to the birth of civilization. The ubiquitous nature of antiquities - stick a shovel in the ground almost anywhere, and it is difficult not to find something - has helped mold a collective consciousness, a national identity, that is uniquely Egyptian…

Egyptians, as a group, are extremely patient, though given the growing pressure of daily life, a bit less than they used to be. Their it-is-what-it-is attitude is often attributed to a strong religious faith and a conviction that all events are God’s will.

Yet growing up and living amid so much history has something to do with that view, too; the abundant antiquities in everyday life are a constant reminder of one’s place in time.

People come and go, pharaohs come and go, even President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 27 years, will go, too (though talk of that certainty is discouraged).

No need to worry.

Or as Egyptians like to say, “Maalesh,” which, depending on the circumstance, means “Never mind” or “Oh, well.”

“When other people talk about hoping to see something happen soon, they probably mean within the next few months,” said Aly Salem, an Egyptian playwright. “For an Egyptian, it could mean in the next 50 or 60 years. An Egyptian has a particular pace. His pace is different than an American’s. And a long history can do this.”

As the global financial system tries to right itself after staggering to the brink of collapse, one banking sector finds itself in somewhat better shape than most of the world. That would be the Islamic banking system, which credits its steadiness to practices that are unique to Islamic finance, such as banning interest and shying away from excessive debt and risk. The Washington Post has a story on the topic:

As big Western financial institutions have teetered one after the other in the crisis of recent weeks, another financial sector is gaining new confidence: Islamic banking.

Proponents of the ancient practice, which looks to sharia law for guidance and bans interest and trading in debt, have been promoting Islamic finance as a cure for the global financial meltdown.

This week, Kuwait’s commerce minister, Ahmad Baqer, was quoted as saying that the global crisis will prompt more countries to use Islamic principles in running their economies. U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmet, visiting Jiddah, said experts at his agency have been learning the features of Islamic banking.

Though the trillion-dollar Islamic banking industry faces challenges with the slump in real estate and stock prices, advocates say the system has built-in protection from the kind of runaway collapse that has afflicted so many institutions. For one thing, the use of financial instruments such as derivatives, blamed for the downfall of banking, insurance and investment giants, is banned. So is excessive risk-taking.

“The beauty of Islamic banking and the reason it can be used as a replacement for the current market is that you only promise what you own. Islamic banks are not protected if the economy goes down — they suffer — but you don’t lose your shirt,” said Majed al-Refaie, who heads Bahrain-based Unicorn Investment Bank.

The theological underpinning of Islamic banking is scripture that declares that collection of interest is a form of usury, which is banned in Islam. In the modern world, that translates into an attitude toward money that is different from that found in the West: Money cannot just sit and generate more money. To grow, it must be invested in productive enterprises.

“In Islamic finance you cannot make money out of thin air,” said Amr al-Faisal, a board member of Dar al-Mal al-Islami, a holding company that owns several Islamic banks and financial institutions. “Our dealings have to be tied to actual economic activity, like an asset or a service. You cannot make money off of money. You have to have a building that was actually purchased, a service actually rendered, or a good that was actually sold.”

Yes, apparently “The Oprah Winfrey Show” is a hit even in Saudi Arabia, where Oprah has become a source of inspiration to many Saudi women.

When “The Oprah Winfrey Show” was first broadcast in Saudi Arabia in November 2004 on a Dubai-based satellite channel, it became an immediate sensation among young Saudi women. Within months, it had become the highest-rated English-language program among women 25 and younger, an age group that makes up about a third of Saudi Arabia’s population.

In a country where the sexes are rigorously separated, where topics like sex and race are rarely discussed openly and where a strict code of public morality is enforced by religious police called hai’a, Ms. Winfrey provides many young Saudi women with new ways of thinking about the way local taboos affect their lives — as well as about a variety of issues including childhood sexual abuse and coping with marital strife — without striking them, or Saudi Arabia’s ruling authorities, as subversive.

Some women here say Ms. Winfrey’s assurances to her viewers — that no matter how restricted or even abusive their circumstances may be, they can take control in small ways and create lives of value — help them find meaning in their cramped, veiled existence…

Saudi women say they are drawn to Ms. Winfrey not only because she openly addresses subjects considered taboo locally, but also because she speaks of self-empowerment and change.

Wafa Muhammad, 38, a mother of five from Riyadh, said she believed that, in their adoration of Ms. Winfrey, Saudi women are expressing a hesitant sense of longing for real change in their country…

In a country where women are forbidden to vote, or to travel without the permission of a male guardian, a sense of powerlessness can lead women to look for unlikely sources of rescue, Ms. Muhammad explained. “If women here have problems with their fathers or their brothers, what can they do but look to Oprah?” she asked. “The idea that she will come and help them is a dream for them.”

Well, yes, if Humoud Yakobi has his way. The chairman of the Iraq Board of Tourism, Yakobi has a vision of legions of tourists returning to Iraq. Not decades from now, but in the near future. The NY Times reports on Iraqi dreams of building a tourist infrastructure.

Humoud Yakobi gazes at the rubble-strewn parking lot, the maze of blast walls and the clusters of dusty palm trees on the island around him and sees hotels, restaurants and shopping malls, with throngs of people enjoying refreshments by the swimming pool or playing a round of golf.

“I always imagine it as some kind of heaven,” he said.

Mr. Yakobi, the chairman of Iraq’s Board of Tourism, is charged with attracting foreign visitors to his beleaguered country. Jazirat A’aras, an island in the Tigris that is just across from the fortified Green Zone and the new American Embassy, is central to his plans. He is seeking investors who might want to spend $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion to build on the island…

Some might argue that Mr. Yakobi’s vision is premature, if not absurd. Despite a drop in violence in Baghdad in recent months, Mr. Yakobi still cannot leave his office on Haifa Street without a convoy of armored cars and bodyguards. During an hourlong interview at his office recently, the lights blinked off, then on again, as the building’s generator kicked in, an event repeated many times a day throughout Iraq. It was not so long ago that American forces sometimes had to escort the workers at the Tourism Board home, shielding them from the firefights in the street.

Mr. Yakobi, however, is by his own description an optimist, and he says he has some reason to believe that Iraq, known for its holy sites and antiquities, will once again be a tourist mecca.

Other Iraqis are a bit more pragmatic about the possibilities.

Hassan al-Fayadh, head of the tourism board’s media relations department, was more skeptical.

“Western visitors are very sensitive to bombings and things like that,” he said. “You can’t achieve the tourism industry without security.”

Yes, tourists tend to be sensitive to bombings. Still, you have to admire a person with a vision.

There is a fascinating article in the NY Times about the culture of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. This city has become a contemporary melting pot of the Islamic world, where expatriates form a new identity and try to merge the choices of modernity with the traditions of their Islamic religion.

In his old life in Cairo, Rami Galal knew his place and his fate: to become a maintenance man in a hotel, just like his father. But here, in glittering, manic Dubai, he is confronting the unsettling freedom to make his own choices.

Here Mr. Galal, 24, drinks beer almost every night and considers a young Russian prostitute his girlfriend. But he also makes it to work every morning, not something he could say when he lived back in Egypt. Everything is up to him, everything: what meals he eats, whether he goes to the mosque or a bar, who his friends are.

“I was more religious in Egypt,” Mr. Galal said, taking a drag from yet another of his ever-burning Marlboros. “It is moving too fast here. In Egypt there is more time, they have more control over you. It’s hard here. I hope to stop drinking beer; I know it’s wrong. In Egypt, people keep you in check. Here, no one keeps you in check.”

In Egypt, and across much of the Arab world, there is an Islamic revival being driven by young people, where faith and ritual are increasingly the cornerstone of identity. But that is not true amid the ethnic mix that is Dubai, where 80 percent of the people are expatriates, with 200 nationalities.

This economically vital, socially freewheeling yet unmistakably Muslim state has had a transforming effect on young men. Religion has become more of a personal choice and Islam less of a common bond than national identity.

Dubai is, in some ways, a vision of what the rest of the Arab world could become — if it offered comparable economic opportunity, insistence on following the law and tolerance for cultural diversity. In this environment, religion is not something young men turn to because it fills a void or because they are bowing to a collective demand. That, in turn, creates an atmosphere that is open not only to those inclined to a less observant way of life, but also to those who are more religious. In Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Algeria, a man with a long beard is often treated as an Islamist — and sometimes denied work. Not here in Dubai.

“Here, I can practice my religion in a natural and free way because it is a Muslim country and I can also achieve my ambition at work,” said Ahmed Kassab, 30, an electrical engineer from Zagazig Egypt, who wears a long dark beard and has a prayer mark on his forehead. “People here judge the person based on productivity more than what he looks like. It’s different in Egypt, of course.” …

In this way, Dubai offers another prescription for promoting moderation. It offers a chance to lead a modern life in an Arab Islamic country. Mr. Abu Zanad raised his beer high, almost in a toast, and said he liked being able to walk through a mall and still hear the call to prayer.

“We like that it’s free and it still has Arab heritage,” he said “It’s not religion, it’s the culture, the Middle Eastern culture.”

The Chicago Tribune has been asking their foreign correspondents for travel tips and for lists of their favorite destinations. One recent installment focused on places in the Middle East and Africa. An excerpt:

Liz Sly on the Middle East:

My favorite place: The Old City of Damascus, Syria, a warren of ancient cobbled streets, mosques and churches that evokes the Orient of the imagination.

Don’t miss: Petra, the majestic, rose-red city carved 8,000 years ago out of inaccessible mountains in the Jordanian desert. It’s too breathtaking for words and too old to wrap your head around.

Joel Greenberg on Israel:

When friends come to visit I always take them to … The beach, either in Tel Aviv or the beautiful strand at Beit Yanai near Netanya. The Mediterranean is warm and inviting most of the year, and there is ample opportunity for long strolls on the sand and viewing brilliant sunsets.

Best photo-op: The stunning view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, or, from another angle, at the Sherover Promenade, preferably a little before sunset.

Laurie Goering on Africa:

My favorite place: It’s nearly impossible to choose just one place in a continent so diverse and wonderful, but Madagascar’s lemur-filled forests, Namibia’s silent deserts and Chapman’s Peak scenic drive in Cape Town, South Africa, are contenders.

Best place no one knows about: The Matapos Hills outside of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, a conservation area that is home to some impressive cave paintings by the ancient San people. The hike to the paintings, through gorgeous bushland, can’t be beat either.

There was an interesting recent article about Tel Aviv in the New York Times travel section. It’s interesting because it not only gives the typical tourist overview of a destination, but it gets into the culture and the psyche of Tel Aviv and Israel. An excerpt:

Tel Aviv is “half Iran, half California; it’s a synagogue meets a sushi bar,” says the writer and lifelong Tel Aviv resident Etgar Keret… “This is a country that on the one hand is so conservative that we don’t have public transportation on Saturdays, but on the other hand is so open that we sent a transsexual to the Eurovision Song Contest,” says Mr. Keret. “Israel is full of contradiction. In Jerusalem, this contradiction means separation. But it doesn’t in Tel Aviv.”

For Israelis, the 45 minutes that separate Jerusalem from Tel Aviv are a fitting metaphor for the cultural gulf they see between, on the one hand, the hidebound, pious cradle of world religion and, on the other, the libertine, nightclub-filled Mediterranean idyll. But for us visitors, the proximity of the two cities is a huge boon — it’s rare that you can pair a beach vacation with 5,000 years of history…

Tel Avivans are quick to point out that their city is less suffused with history than Jerusalem, and that that is what makes their city so hospitable to newcomers and to people who don’t fit in elsewhere. Perhaps, like others in the Middle East, Tel Avivans must perforce set their gaze on the present.

Along with the story there is a slide show about Tel Aviv, titled ”The Capital of Mediterranean Cool.” 

Rick Steves became famous for his European travel advice, but he recently journeyed to Iran in order to produce a documentary about that country and its people. A photo essay about the trip was then published in Yes! magazine. The experience was described by Abdi Sami, who accompanied Rick on his travels.

Over the years, Rick had introduced so many travelers to European destinations through travel books, television programs, and travel blogs. Friends asked him to consider how he could increase understanding between Iran and the United States. Rick realized that the most powerful thing would be to produce a television show introducing Americans to the true Iran … the people, their extraordinary hospitality, their beautiful country, and ancient history.

Everywhere we went, we came across people young and old, teachers, students, artists, business people, soldiers, and farmers and we were always, always received with warmest welcomes and with smiling faces.

The photo essay begins here.

There is a lot of money being thrown around on development projects these days across the Gulf kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula, and no place is more emblematic of this construction frenzy than is the city of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Nevertheless, some projects still boggle the mind, like Dubai’s proposed “moving skyscraper” - an 80-story building in which each floor can spin independently, thus creating the effect of a shape-shifting building. Not only that, but the entire structure will be powered by built-in wind turbines. The BBC has the story and a video.

The Dynamic Tower design is made up of 80 pre-fabricated apartments which will spin independently of one another.

“It’s the first building that rotates, moves, and changes shape,” said architect David Fisher, who is Italian, at a news conference in New York. “This building never looks the same, not once in a lifetime,” he added.

The 420-metre (1,378-foot) building’s apartments would spin a full 360 degrees, at voice command, around a central column by means of 79 giant power-generating wind turbines located between each floor.

The slender building would be energy self-sufficient as the turbines would produce enough electricity to power the entire building and even feed extra power back into the grid.

I came across some interesting cultural insights in a recent article about Egypt in the International Herald Tribune. Although the story, on its surface, is about Egyptian perceptions of the U.S., just begin reading and you’ll discover some anecdotes that shed light into Egyptian and Arab culture.

My favorite, at the start of the article, describes the local penchant for giving a wrong answer rather than no answer at all:

Emad Refaat strode out of his workshop with purpose, his grease-covered hands pointing down the road even before he could see the road.

“Come here,” he said, his voice strong with reassurance. “Go to the light, make the first right, that’s Salah el-Din Street.”

Sure?

“I am sure, totally sure.”

But he was wrong, totally wrong..

“I wanted to help,” said Refaat, 28, who was slightly embarrassed when he was asked why he gave the wrong directions with such conviction. “I was actually going to tell you to ask the flower vendor on the corner. He knows all the streets.”

Navigating Egypt can be a challenge of understanding, not just the language, but its culture, values and norms…In Egypt, it is routine, absolutely routine, to get the wrong directions.

That is not because people are mischievous, but because if you ask for help, they feel obligated to try to help - even if they send you off in the wrong direction.

Why in the world, you might now be asking, would someone think it was helpful to give wrong directions? Here is the answer:

Egyptian society values hospitality and personal honor over precision and directness…”Here, even if someone sends you in the wrong direction, he still feels that he did what he was supposed to do,” said Hamdi Taha, head of a charity, Karam al-Islam, and a professor of communications at Al Azhar university. “He doesn’t think he misguided you. He helped. Right and wrong is a relative thing.”

This cultural explanation is as logical to an Egyptian mind as it might be illogical to a Westerner. That, to me, is what makes culture so fascinating.

Yesterday, I had a post about gender relations in Saudi Arabia and the remarkable lengths that the society goes to in order to maintain separation between males and females of different families. I linked to a story in the International Herald Tribune in which young men were interviewed about their interactions with women. Today, we cover the second part of the Tribune’s series, in which a reporter writes about male-female relations from the perspective of Saudi women.

First, an overview of the situation that females deal with in Saudi Arabia:

The separation between the sexes in Saudi Arabia is so extreme that it is difficult to overstate. Saudi women may not drive, and they must wear floor-length black abayas and head coverings in public at all times. They are driven around in cars with tinted windows, attend girls-only schools and university departments and eat in “family” sections of cafés and restaurants, which are partitioned off from sections used by single male diners.

Women-only gyms, women-only boutiques and travel agencies, even a women-only shopping mall, have been established in Riyadh in recent years to serve women who did not previously have access to such places unless they were chaperoned by a male relative.

Playful as they are, girls like Othman and her friends are well aware of the limits that their society places on their behavior. And, for the most part, they say that they do not seriously question those limits. Most of the girls say that their faith - in the strict interpretation of Islam espoused by the Wahhabi religious establishment here - runs very deep.

They argue a bit among themselves about the details - whether it is acceptable to have men on your Facebook friends list, say, or whether a male first cousin should ever be able to see you without your face covered - and they peppered an American reporter with questions about what the young Saudi men she had met were thinking about and talking about.

But they seem to regard the idea of having a conversation with a man before their showfas and subsequent engagements with real horror. When they do talk about girls who chat with men online or who somehow find their own fiancés, these stories have something of the quality of urban legends about them: fuzzy in their particulars, told about friends of friends, or “someone in my sister’s class.”

Well-brought-up, unmarried young women are so isolated from boys and men that when they talk about them, it sometimes sounds as if they are discussing a different species.

A view of pre-wedding interactions (or lack thereof) between engaged couples:

…it is becoming more and more socially acceptable for young engaged women to speak to their fiancés on the phone, though more conservative families still forbid all contact between engaged couples.

But it is considered embarrassing to admit to much strong feeling for a fiancé before the wedding, and before their engagements, any kind of contact with a man is out of the question.

And even a glimpse into some of the clandestine back-and-forth that takes place between young Saudi men and women:

A woman cannot switch her phone’s Bluetooth feature on in a public place for fear of receiving a barrage of love poems and photos of flowers and small children that many Saudi men keep stored on their phones for the purposes of flirtation. And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis had started buying “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex.

Tukhaifi and Shaden know of girls in their college who have passionate friendships, possibly even love affairs, with other girls, but they say that this … is just a “game” borne of frustration, something that will inevitably end when the girls in question become engaged. And they and their friends say that they … don’t know any girl who has actually spoken to a boy who contacted her via Bluetooth…

“One test is that if you’re ashamed to tell your family something, then you know for sure it’s wrong,” she continued. “For a while I had Facebook friends who were boys - I didn’t e-mail with them or anything, but they asked me to ‘friend’ them and so I did. But then I thought about my family and I took them off the list.”

Like yesterday, the actual Tribune story is much longer and filled with a wealth of other anecdotes and details.

After reading through both articles, two things struck me. One, of course, is that young men and women in Saudi Arabia have the same longing for romance and playfulness as do young people everywhere in the world. But the other revelation was the almost complete sense of acceptance (at least among those interviewed for the articles) regarding the importance of the culture’s moral values and the need for the social restrictions that keep males and females apart from each other. Just more proof that, as I’ve said before, we are all silently and permanently molded by the assumptions of the culture in which we are raised.

It’s easy in the West for us to express shock or dismay at the state of gender relations in some Arab countries (the veiling of women, the separation of the sexes, etc.), and particularly in a very conservative culture such as Saudi Arabia’s. However, it’s also easy for us to forget that many people in those cultures not only accept their state of affairs but also believe it to be in their best interests.

I’m not advocating any particular position here, and I do feel considerable sympathy for individuals who are constricted by the conservative dictates of their culture. But it’s nevertheless an interesting exercise to try to view a culture from the perspective of someone who was born and raised in it. That’s what the International Herald Tribune did recently, in a fascinating two-part series that looked at gender relations in Saudi Arabia from the perspective of men and women in that society. Today, I’m providing a few excerpts from the article in which young men discussed their relations and romances.

An overview of the state of gender relations: 

In the West, youth is typically a time to challenge authority. But what stood out in dozens of interviews with young men and women here was how completely they have accepted the religious and cultural demands of the Muslim world’s most conservative society.

They may chafe against the rules, even try to evade them at times, but they can be merciless in their condemnation of those who flout them too brazenly. And they are committed to perpetuating the rules with their own children.

That suggests that Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam, largely uncontested at home by the next generation and spread abroad by Saudi money in a time of religious revival, will increasingly shape how Muslims around the world will live their faith.

Young men like Nader and Enad are taught that they are the guardians of the family’s reputation, expected to shield their female relatives from shame and avoid dishonoring their families by their own behavior. It is a classic example of how the Saudis have melded their faith with their desert tribal traditions.

“One of the most important Arab traditions is honor,” Enad said. “If my sister goes in the street and someone assaults her, she won’t be able to protect herself. The nature of men is that men are more rational. Women are not rational. With one or two or three words, a man can get what he wants from a woman. If I call someone and a girl answers, I have to apologize. It’s a huge deal. It is a violation of the house.”

A glimpse into how men and women end up agreeing to marry despite not knowing each other:

Enad’s father agreed to let Nader marry one of his four daughters. Nader picked Sarah, though she is not the oldest, in part, he said, because he actually saw her face when she was a child and recalled that she was pretty.

They quickly signed a wedding contract, making them legally married, but by tradition they do not consider themselves so until the wedding party, set for this spring. During the intervening months, they are not allowed to see each other or spend any time together.

Nader said he expected to see his new wife for the first time after their wedding ceremony - which would also be segregated by sex - when they are photographed as husband and wife.

And a look at the small romantic rebellions that take place even in Suadi Arabia:

…Saudi traditions do not allow for romance between young, unmarried couples. There are many stories of young men and women secretly dating, falling in love but being unable to tell their parents because they could never explain how they knew each other in the first place. One young couple said that after two years of secret dating they hired a matchmaker to arrange a phony introduction so their parents would think that was how they had met.

These are small excerpts from a much larger story that is well worth reading if the topic interests you. Tomorrow, the female perspective.

Thanks to a momentous project by the Gallup organization, we now have for the first time a representative measure of the opinions of Muslims around the globe. The Christian Science Monitor just published a special report that is based on the Gallup Poll of the Muslim World and the results are fascinating.

Since the momentous events of Sept. 11, 2001, countless news stories, TV commentaries, and books have speculated on the causes of terrorism, the attitudes of Muslims, and a purported clash of civilizations between Islamic societies and the West.

What has not been available is any reliable measure of the viewpoints of ordinary Muslims, who constitute 20 percent of the global population.

That is no longer the case. Through an ambitious six-year project that involved hour-long, face-to-face interviews with residents in nearly 40 nations, Gallup has plumbed the perspectives of Muslim men and women – urban and rural, educated and illiterate, young and old.

A few of the interesting findings uncovered by the poll:

•   When asked what they most admire about the West, Muslims pointed to (1) technology, (2) a value system of hard work, self-responsibility, rule of law, and cooperation, and (3) fair political systems, with respect for human rights, democracy, and gender equality.

•   What they dislike the most about the West includes: denigration of Islam and Muslims, promiscuity, and ethical and moral corruption.

•   What they admire least about their own Muslim societies includes: lack of unity, economic and political corruption, and extremism.

•  Large majorities cite the equal importance of democracy and Islam to the quality of life and progress of the Muslim world. They see no contradiction between democratic values and religious principles.

•  Most want neither theocracy nor secular democracy but a third model in which religious principles and democratic values coexist. They want their own democratic model that draws on Islamic law as a source.

There is much more in the full report. You can see additional insights here.

Andrew Lee Butters is a correspondent for Time magazine and he just wrote a fun little piece about the process of shopping for oriental rugs in the bazaars of the Middle East. In it, he provides tips for maintaining your sanity through the interminable and inevitable bargaining sessions with local merchants.

My collection began with a small prayer rug purchased from a souk in the old city of Damascus…The Syrian capital has always been a particularly good place to shop for rugs, ever since Silk Road travelers from the great weaving cultures of Central Asia passed through this final arc of the fertile crescent on their way to the Holy lands…

Even in Syria, however, rug buying can be intimidating for the beginner. Innumerable variations of region, style and quality make establishing the value of any particular rug daunting. And then there’s the relentless bazaar bargaining that can turn any transaction a microcosmic “clash of cultures” …

First lesson: The seller is going to win, because he invented the game…no matter how hard I’ve worked at trying to distinguish between an Iranian Kurdish sumac and an Azeri kilim, there’s little chance that I’m going to outfox a merchant with years of experience and generations of rug traders in his blood. One way or another, I’m going to have to pay the pink-face tax. So play your own game: If the rug works for you, it’s a good rug…

Another rule of thumb: Life is unfair, and everything comes a lot easier when you don’t really need it. I did my best-ever bit of bargaining killing time on a layover in Istanbul, last January. A rug trader lured me into his shop and showed me a beautiful Anatolian kilim. “I’m on my way to Iraq, I don’t want to buy a rug,” I kept telling the guy, as the price kept plummeting.

He concludes by offering a bit of perspective…

The wars and upheavals of the 20th century have largely destroyed the nomadic herding cultures that created these wonderful rugs. And although the Antiques Roadshow hasn’t shown up in Damascus yet, the heavy hand of globalization has almost finished scouring the souks of Syria for all that is old and good, and shipped it off for sale in antiseptic showrooms in London, New York, and Dubai. The rugs offered to you in the souks of the Middle East are almost certainly the best you will ever see, artifacts from a time when humans made things of meaning and value.

Gill Harvey went to Egypt to do research for a novel. While there, she enjoyed getting off the tourist trail and appreciating the sights and sounds of everyday life in Cairo and Luxor. She wrote about her experiences for the U.K. Independent.

It’s five years since my last visit, but it only takes one ride in a battered Fiat taxi and some good-humoured banter to make me feel glad to be back. Even as a woman travelling alone, Cairo has always seemed safe. This vast, sprawling metropolis – its population more than twice that of London’s – feels manageable, non-threatening, the sort of place that sweeps along on a tide of its own self-absorption.

On waking up to a hot, smog-filled day, I feel oddly liberated by my former visits. I don’t have to go to the pyramids, brave the labyrinth of the Khan el-Khalili, gaze upon Cairo from the ramparts of the citadel – splendid though all these things are. Instead, I can simply wander, reminding myself of the detail and bustle of a great city. It’s an option that’s open to anyone, of course; all you need is time.

One of the first things I tackle is how to cross the road. My hotel is in Garden City, close to the swirling hub of traffic that is the Midan Talaat Harb, a focal point of downtown Cairo. I remember the first time I watched people crossing here; how they seemed to merge and blend with the stream of fume-belching, honking Fiats, Peugeots and buses in a kind of death-defying dance routine. It was an art I mastered once; it’s time to do it again. A hand raised, Moses-like, to arrest the sea of cars, I’m soon ducking and diving with the best of them.

When hunger strikes, I conduct a quest for koshari in the downtown side-streets. Koshari joints are café-esque, no-nonsense establishments, and I’m served this tasty carb-fest in a stainless steel bowl with a matching beaker of heavily chlorinated tap water. It’s a mound of pasta, rice and lentils topped with fried onions and spicy tomato sauce…

Egypt is refreshingly cheap. It’s also sweltering, so when my soles begin to swell I head for the air-conditioned cool of Groppi’s. This tearoom is an institution, and I sip Lipton tea in an atmosphere of faded colonialism alongside gossiping middle-class couples and ageing bachelors reading Al-Ahram.

Not many Americans holiday in Oman. In fact, other than Dubai, not much of the Arabian Peninsula gets a whole lot of tourist traffic. But that didn’t stop Spud Hilton and his wife from planning a weeklong, 600-mile driving trip through this desert kingdom. He wrote about their experiences for the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Sultanate of Oman, the cap to the southeastern end of the Arabian Peninsula, is years behind glitzy, fabricated Dubai and its ambitious neighbors in terms of opening the fortress doors to tourism. It is unknown to most atlas-phobic Americans.

But in a plot twist worthy of a Bedouin campfire tale, Oman has much more than its neighbors to see: toothy, towering mountains; old-world forts by the hundreds; postcard-perfect beaches; oases of Arabian culture untouched by oil wells; and mosques of astonishing size and beauty. Coupled with a population friendly to Westerners (most of which practices a particularly tolerant, non-violent branch of Islam) and a few modern comforts, Oman offers an accessible, widely unspoiled slice of Arabia for casual travelers and destination trophy-hunters alike…

Oman is about the size of Kansas, far too big and diverse to capture in a five-day trip. Instead, we planned a 600-mile loop through the country’s northeast end, including the picturesque Batinah Coast, the bustling, expanding capital city of Muscat, and the country’s interior, the domain of Bedouin tribes, palm oases villages and a portion of the infamous expanse of desert known as the Empty Quarter.

There was an article in the NY Times this week about the challenges and the allure of doing business in emerging markets around the globe. Or, more accurately, “emerging emerging markets.” Buried within the story was a fascinating account of just how business gets transacted in some cultures.

First, the overview of these markets:

Forget Hong Kong, Beijing, Moscow and Mumbai. Intrepid bankers, investors and hedge fund managers are journeying to farther corners to do deals…

Many of the new investment targets are mineral- or oil-rich nations, like Ghana, where high commodity prices are spurring domestic economic growth, the political framework is solid or stabilizing, and doors are opening to foreign investment. Others, like Vietnam, are adopting capitalism and creating industries. Most of these places have large young populations that are moving from rural economies into cities, eager for cellphones and cars.

Some investors and deal-makers call them “frontier” markets, but there are plenty of other names for these nations. A Merrill Lynch analyst refers to them as “emerging emerging” markets, while Goldman Sachs focuses on the N-11, or Next 11, developing countries.

And, for our purpose of understanding cultures, here is a description of a